The World-Class Culture Blueprint: Secrets of a CRO with 3 Exits

Speaker A: Welcome everybody. This is Brian Staley and we are back with Brandon Taylor for part two. If you missed part one, go back and check it out. He literally walks through step by step, some of the most amazing use cases I've seen any clients implement specifically as it relates to AI LED go to market. He's had three exits as a CRO, has done a lot of other things and is in the process of hyperscaling a company right now. In charge of enterprise sales and partnerships over at CompanyCam. Brandon, welcome. Happy to have you back, man.

Speaker B: Thank you, Ryan. Thank you, Ryan. Happy to be back?

Speaker A: Yeah, it's fantastic. I'm excited. So what we're going to break down now and we were chatting about this a little bit earlier and one of the things I told Brandon off camera is like, hey, like I've had a lot of experience with different cultures for companies that I've rolled out AI go to market transformation with. And I've seen really amazing cultures that like feed off each other in a really positive way and I've even seen toxic cultures. Right. So I've seen kind of both sides to it. And I think this is one of the most important things for companies moving forward because of how fast things are changing. So what's your take on this, man? Because I know you've seen a lot of different experience paths, growth type companies. So how do you view culture in a world right now where we've never had change happen as fast as it is right now?

Speaker B: Well, you know, I'm lucky that having been an outsourced hero, it's not just I've stepped into full time positions, I've stepped into other 14 other companies and you know, it's real quick, I'm real quick to evaluate the culture and a lot of times you'll find a few different things. You'll find, oh, it's a family friendly culture, it's we're all family. And then you'll find toxic cultures and then maybe you'll find a culture that's a really good culture, high growth, high potential culture. But typically they would invite me in when things are going well. I was a guy that would come in and, you know, figure out what we need to do to get it to double digit or triple digit growth. But I lean in on world class culture because if you ask anyone, you ask anyone, hey, do you want to be a part of a world class, you know, do you want to be a part of a national championship team, a World cup team, a Super bowl team, whatever it is, nine times out of 10 people will say yes. And then you ask the second question. Are you willing to do what it takes to become that person or be a part of that team? Because if you go on that football field or that soccer field and you step in there and you're not part of a world, if you're not a world class player, then you will not shine. Right. And it's real easy to step into an organization and evaluate and assess and understand what's there and what's not there. And for me, that's one of the most important things to step into and lean into first. Most people go into the metrics, and I believe the metrics are important. But if you don't have the people to back up where you want to go, that's going to be a bigger problem. So that's one of the bigger things on world class culture for me.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's, that's true. And I love the, the analogy of like, do you want to be on a Super bowl team? And then, but do you want to do what it takes to do that? So how do you kind of flesh that out and what do you approach it when you're, you're building, growing and developing a team to cultivate that culture?

Speaker B: Well, for me, uh, most people would step in and evaluate the team. Right. I like to look at leadership first. Right. Like just like, you know, do an outer assessment of the leadership team, you know, what they've accomplished, how they are as people, who they are as people, then just go a little bit layer down before I get to the sellers and the go to market execution folks, I kind of start from the top down, just the way I would sell an enterprise deal. It's like you're assessing the whole situation. But from there, once you get to the go to market team, you know, if you look at, if you assess the situation and then you look at the numbers and you look at the people and you look at the performance, usually there's a picture there. And then when you start doing cross functional interviews and sales interviews, marketing interviews, you start learning and you'll see there are patterns, typically patterns that says, you know, we're producing, you know, a ton of leads, but sales, they're not closing them. Sales will say, we're getting a ton of leads but now we're qualified. You go to enablement says, well, sales isn't telling me what to do to enable them. You know, you've got these, everyone has a story. When you hear those stories, you start thinking, is this a national championship team? What do we need to do to change it? Is it uh, is it a development challenge? Is it a job responsibilities challenge? Because in nine times out of 10, you want them each function to run that function in a way that's cross functionally aligned in a big way for you to get to the next level. Think about a team. It doesn't matter which team. The teams that win is because they work together, they're rowing the boat in the same direction. And world class starts with the people, moves into alignment.

Speaker A: Okay, totally agree with you on that. So how do you set the expectation that they need to keep up with the speed of change that's happening today in terms of making decisions, output KPIs, how do you approach that?

Speaker B: Well, that's a good question. And I do something that's a little, uh, different than most. You know, if someone reports to me, like directly to me, I always do three things. Three things first, before I get into metrics and numbers, because I need to know who works for me, I need to know what they care about. The three things are one, I will have them do, ah, a vision board. You heard about them old school vision board. But the vision board is not a, the vision board is how they want to live their life. You know, what are the five core values they won't live their life by? Examples would be health. It could be, I want to be spiritual. It could be something more along the lines of professional development or growth. But how do they want to live their life to be happy? The second thing is I want to know, um, in one page, bullet points, five year career plan of what they want from their career. And I'm not saying what they want from my company. What do you want from your career? Do you want to go get an MBA? Do you want my job? You want the CEO's job? All those are a pay because it's their plan. And then once we are on the same page there, we build a development plan. So we reverse engineer into what's happening this year. They're doing it uh, aligned with their career plan. When you do that, they work for themselves, they don't work for me. But if they don't have that, they just work for me. And then I start there. Because now I've tapped into how do we help them get them where they want to go, impact their families, impact their career, change their lives. I start there, then I move into the metrics and the go to market. KPIs. Makes sense.

Speaker A: Yeah, that totally does, man. Like I uh, it's the hardest I ever had my team work for me was when I did that. And the best results, I would say, right. The most autonomous managed team did the best when that was in alignment. So I think that's a really, really strong distinction. What level of expectation do you set with them with change though, and how they need to adapt specifically as it relates to AI? Like, how do you approach that? Because, like, and I'm going to tell you something that I just saw today that blows my mind with AI policies and how they're being driven down. So I'll get to that in a second. But I want to talk to you about how you kind of set expectations of adoption, usability, things along those lines.

Speaker B: Now, are you asking about adoption of uh, I guess AI or just in general expectations on change?

Speaker A: Both. Okay, Both. Because they're not mutually exclusive now. Right. There's so much overlap. So we'd love to hear just kind of how you fixed our factor. Both of them in.

Speaker B: So as an example, like, I've gone through the process, you know, and done the three things, but the question is, is what is our North Star? You know, our North Star is moving up market mid market enterprise, strengthening partnerships and alliances while continuing to scale the S and P engine. But our North Star is in this healthy revenue piece where there's higher gross, higher net. And once you've aligned with the three things that are important to them with the North Star, then you can have the conversations around. The conversations around this typically involves change. And when change happens, I haven't met many people that just love it, right? Like, but embracing it and loving it, you know, there's, there's this distinction where we know it's coming because in every growth organization, change is like one month away, one week away, two months away, six months away. A year from now it will look so different. And having stepped into a fair amount of companies, I, uh, see it change and it gives me this appetite for knowing that, hey, it's coming. I can embrace it, but not everyone does. But it's having the message for them. We know where you want to go, we're going to get you there. We know where the company wants to go. Bridging the gap with, hey, it involves change. And without giving the details because you don't really know the details of the change yet, you haven't done the assessment. But change is coming. And typically that involves growth. And when companies grow, it opens up a world of opportunity. So you tie change and embracing it with opportunities for growth for the people that are in the organization. They're more open and accepting of it.

Speaker A: Uh-huh. Yeah, yeah. I like the North Star approach and then kind of backing into it and setting that as like the new normal. So what about cross functional alignment if you will? Like what do you think's the best way for that? Because like I've seen those patterns that you're talking about with different departments and um, like what do you think? And a lot of times this is hard because not everybody is always under your purview. Right. You just have different departments that are under different leadership and have different approaches. So how do you get that cross departmental alignment and like what do you see working amazing for top performing companies?

Speaker B: Well, I've adopted a scorecard. Uh, right. And what happens is that North Star I told you about. I start, I have a week, I have a bi weekly meeting that aligns all the stakeholders. Sales marketing, rev ops, product and sales enablement. And that scorecard that has a measurement of uh, really all of those. So even if they don't report into me because all of those things impact that North Star. So I start the presentation. I want to remind everyone of our North Star. This is our North Star. Here are the reasons why. And I'll say the same thing every two weeks because I want it to set in. And then the next thing is a scorecard against all the cross functional departments against the North Star. And then we go into each one of those divisions on what they're doing to impact scorecard on how they're doing it, where we're doing well, where we're not doing well, where can you use help? And then you open it up to the group. What do I need for marketing to impact this conversion? What do I need from sales enablement? But you gotta bring em all together even if they don't report to you. Cause that's the only real way to get everyone rowing in the same direction.

Speaker A: Okay, uh, so you take like your team's scorecard, right, like or what they're being evaluated on and then you review that with the supporting members in the room and then that's when you kind of unlock the like hey, how can these other teams help you? Is that I'm just.

Speaker B: For example, uh, mid market enterprise revenue is a target, but each one of the four or five departments I mentioned, they impact it. Right? So I measure, I don't measure product, but I measure inbound outbound marketing events and we go through enablement as well and then we get product updates. So all five of those things will be in the bi weekly meeting. It Gives everyone an opportunity to have a voice and you have all the stakeholders on the call and, and typically there are, you know, probably five to seven like red task or high impact actions that we need to take in the next two weeks that will impact that North Star. So we want everyone thinking that way. Like I wake up thinking about how I drive this number and I know everyone doesn't do it, but they definitely are aware of it and they are aware of the cross functional alignment that's needed. When I said North Star. There's the North Star slide, then there's the, there's the uh, the scorecard slide and then there's a slide on the power of alignment and then I name sales and marketing and rev ops and sales enablement and product and then all the metrics and numbers to it of the impact on alignment. I start every meeting with, wow, so

Speaker A: what's, what do you have on the scorecard then? Like what are the key focus areas that you have on, on the scorecard?

Speaker B: So I'll give you a couple of examples because it's, it's pretty, My idea around the scorecard is that we can see all of our numbers in one place because we have, you know, 12 to 15 systems and everyone reports differently. But this team needs to see it in one place. That's the first thing. I'll give you an example. We have inbound and outbound. On mid market enterprise, outbound conversions and metrics are a little different than inbounds. How much daily outreach are we doing per person? Just average. So we can see that we're there, everyone sees it. And then what are the conversions on that? For example show rate or conversion to opportunity opens to opportunity close. How much AR is closed, how much, how much pipeline coverage do we have? All the way down to performance. Do the same thing on inbound. Are they converting? An example would be we get a ton of inbound leads and they aren't all converting. The question is why? Marketing may say it's sales, sales may say we're not getting good leads, but really none of that really matters. How do we increase the conversion?

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: So then the question is let's look at the marketing content, what we're marketing to, let's look at the sales skills and we just happen to be always working on it all. But at the end of the day that number needs to go up and it's going to take a village, uh, a tribe, you know, it's going to take all of us. It's not going to take sales fixing it or marketing or sales, all of us. That's why we put the numbers on there. We do the same on marketing, all their performance and conversions, same on events. How are we doing at events and so on.

Speaker A: Well, you nailed it and so thank you for that. I think that's. I love that example and I think it's hyper tactical and useful that anybody could apply in revenue leadership. So props to you on that. But we are up on time and I want to be sensitive to your calendar. So where can people find you? Where can they find more about CompanyCam and what you're doing as well?

Speaker B: Yeah, so I live in Austin, Texas, and I, uh, chair the CRO Group in Austin. So you can join us there or one of the happy hours. Also, you can find me at brandon taylor@companycam.com I'm also on LinkedIn. Brandon Taylor in Austin, Texas. Come see me.

Speaker A: Love it, man. Well, thanks for being on the show again for part two. You did not disappoint, man. You crushed it on both episodes. So thanks for being on and, uh, appreciate you being on the show, Brandon.

Speaker B: All right, we'll see you, Ryan.

Speaker A: All right, we will see you all on the next episode.